(edited by WEXXES.2378)
Universal Turrets, semi-guide
Rule of Thumb:
Don’t nest. It’s a bad habit on any who uses turrets. You want broken turrets? Because that’s how you get broken turrets.
Nesting = Placing all your turrets down in a nice, small area before anything even happens.
Instead, try to keep one out when holding a point or when you know someone is approaching. Having every single one out before the fight starts generally does not play out well. Try to deploy them as the fight goes on: they are more likely going to be placed where you actually want them to be at the time and the enemy can’t AoE them beforehand.
This applies to PvE as well. You want the mobs going after you and not your turrets. If you can keep it like that, your turrets will last much longer. In dungeons, never place turrets before fights start, especially when stacking around corners. Luckily, you should have deployable turrets, so you can have them where you want without actually going there.
Also, the throw range on Deployable turrets is 900. Rifle turret has a range of 1,000. That means you can basically put someone into combat from 1,900 range. Great for when you see enemies coming you don’t want to face: putting them into combat means they move a lot slower.
Turrets are not for damage. People have done the math. They are for control. Use them for control.
Try to control enemy pathing as well. In GW2, people don’t zig zag. There’s no reason to. They want to go from Point A, their position, to Point B, you, the delicious engineer. In big open areas, try to position or place a turret so that its between Point A and B.
Drop N’ Pop, which is basically the practice of dropping a turret, overcharge, detonate, is not generally a bad thing. Don’t use it for that sole purpose though: you can have a lot of extra damage from keeping a turret out.
Prioritize interrupting enemies when you can: it means you live longer, they can’t attack or move for a while, and maybe they will waste a stun break. It also sets you up for a burst of damage: knocking back with rocket turret, followed by an immobilize and the rocket overcharge can dish out quite a bit of damage.
Don’t forget about your turrets. Sometimes there’s so much going on that you lose track of what turret has done what. If you know when they recently fired, you can time your overcharges a lot better.
(edited by WEXXES.2378)
Trait and Build History
So the base trait line for this “build” is 2/0/0/0/2.
The rest is really up to you: do you play condi damage? Zerker? Or you want to be super tanky? How about healing power? It does not matter what you take, because it will work. The play-style is generally the same, the stats merely reinforce a certain aspect of it.
2/4/2/2/4 is what I used to run at first. It featured decent rifle damage, SD, 50% reduced damage while stunned, as well as some minor traits that proc every minute or so. Rifle Turret, Rocket Turret, and Net turret.
I slowly started to run 2/6/0/0/6. At this point, I was zerking my way through everything. High rifle damage with high SD burst, relying on immobilize to stop stability users from reaching me. Any thief that sneaks up on me usually has a bad day.
At this point, no matter what build I faced except a few cheese builds, it didn’t matter if I had abysmal amounts of condi clear or 0 stun breaks. Hambow warriors and necromancers died to that build. CC is very strong, especially when its chained for great durations while dealing high amounts of damage. They can’t apply conditions on me if they can’t do anything to begin with.
I started to overlook the fights that actually happened. Most of them were 1v1 encounters. If it was a group fight, I’d always be on the sidelines, just like my turrets would be, bursting people down. If 2 or more people started to gang up on me, I was basically screwed and had to run.
A burst build with high CC is quite deadly. I wondered why people didn’t run this kind of setup to begin with.
I actually took the liberty to run this very build today. Here’s 3 “fights” that happened where I proceed to lock the kitten out of the enemy, clicky
Please forgive the terrible video. There were a lot of areas where I could have improved, but I was too busy recording with terrible frame rate.
Fight #1: Placing rocket turret on the edge. So that guardian would have gotten shot down there multiple times.
Fight #2: Healing Turret button got bugged out. You’ll notice that its flashing to activate but it never did, so he was able to use his block. No biggie.
Fight #3: When fleeing, I could have put down fire field and blown up my turrets to knock them back while stacking some might. I messed up the dodge jump roll and fell down. I mistimed the flame turret and placed it before the overcharge was ready. I should have walked up and blunderbuss + jump shot the shadow refuge. I should have waited for the thief to appear first and then overcharge the flame turret (I knew the thief would come after me): instead I was too hasty and did it immediately, which ended right when the thief showed up.
Anyway, I’ve ended up with this:
2/0/6/4/2
The 6 in tools for Fortified Turrets, for obvious reasons. One of the turrets weakness was range, especially those that can extend beyond a 1,000 range. No longer. Because I don’t nest, the use of fortified turrets is (wait for it) fortified.
4 in alchemy. Acidic Coating and the trait that gives protection when stunned. An extra tack on survival. With flame turret smoke field up AND acidic coating, good luck touching me at melee range.
Also, learning that thieves hate being blinded is also good to know.
I have run this setup in rated PvP matches, some of which were played with top 500 players on my team / enemy teams. I’ve held my own, I’ve almost never lost to a 1v1 at home point, I’ve even had a decap engie come to me and much to his surprise he couldn’t decap me (I wonder why) and in the long run ended up dead as soon as a second team mate came. In a single day, I’ve entered the top 500 myself, lol.
For those that like more damage, 2/4/6/0/2 works well. About a 25% damage increase at the cost of survival.
I did consider including a bomb kit somewhere at some point, but the problem with bombs is that:
1) You cannot use your weapon.
2) Bombs are put at your feet.
Unlike a flame turret, which
1) Can be thrown
2) Fights regardless of what you are doing
I included what I used to run because they still work. They still do what they do, provided you play it that way. But with the changes in meta and what I usually see, I decided to take on a more defensive option. Feel free to run whatever you like: the traits should be quite obvious.
(edited by WEXXES.2378)
Random Turret Facts and Tips
Turrets are one of the only few things in the game that, no matter what state you are in except dead and downed, you can control them.
If you have surprise shot, you can use that as sort of a targeting beam for turrets even while stunned. Use that in conjunction with turret overcharges for some sweet plays.
Detonate Turret and Turret Overcharge can be used while stunned, dazed, or blinded. The knockbacks will knockback regardless of being blinded.
Every time you use a toolbelt skill, including detonate turret, thats 10 endurance back for you.
So for example, healing turret water field and 4 blast finishers. Not only do you get a huge burst heal, but you also get a free dodge roll. Great for emergencies.
Turrets face the direction you are facing when first placed. If you need a turret shot to go off immediately, adjust your facing position before the turret lands.
Turrets have a very slow turn time. Someone with swiftness can actually run around a turret and not get shot for quite a while. Again, another reason why not to nest.
A rifle turret, rocket turret, and a flame turret can do about 600 + 400 + 100 + 300 (burn base) every second. That’s 1,400 damage a second, in theory. Add that to whatever you are doing with your regular attacks. The best part is (ironically) is that it does not scale to stats. So with a full healing power build, I can do that much damage, + 500 rifle damage shots, yet still have about 1,600+ Healing Power. Oh, and a lot of CC.
Detonate Turret does damage. About 1000+, cannot crit, regardless of build. You can be a full condi build and still do about 1k on turret detonation.
Weakness
AoE is still a weakness, even if you don’t nest. In most cases, the enemy will be able to hit you and the turret. That’s why I often utilize a Drop N’ Pop method: the turret is going to die anyway, might as well make use of it. Adopting this play style mitigates the weakness.
Mobility is still a weakness as well. Again, adopting this play style makes it less of a pain.
Longbow Rangers with 1,500 range. Because no amounts of reflect will change the fact they can wait or shoot something else without you posing as a threat.
Mesmers with a whole bunch of reflects. Mesmers with staffs.
Ranged CC. But then again, Ranged CC works against any build.
Minion Mancer, to a certain extent. You will most likely go down, but so will the necromancer. You will most likely hurt the MM necro really badly before going down.
Turrets
Rifle Turret, Rocket Turret, and Flame Turret is my usual setup.
Net Turret is great if you have trouble with enemies trailing you all the time, or if you have trouble setting up CC. Terrible for any big fights you want to get into.
Thumper Turret. I had thoughts on swapping out Rifle Turret out with a thumper turret: Yes, its 3 blast finishers in one, it has 1 knockback (trait) and 1-2 launches (overcharge). It cripples. It includes a stun break in the turret build. What I don’t like about it at all is mobility. A rifle turret will keep shooting as long as they are within 1,000 range. A thumper turret needs to be within almost a fifth of that range, which is terrible for any mobility reasons.
If you like to fight on point or stuff, Thumper Turret over Rifle Turret is actually a better choice.
I have rocket turret for burst damage and CC overcharge. The CD is 20 seconds! It’s a must for me.
Flame Turret, as I explained before. Fire Field, Smoke Field, Blast finisher, Burns. Throw-able, moderate cooldown. To me, this is the best turret, minus the healing turret.
A lot of people love the rifle turret. With a high damage shot for 8-10s cooldown, instant cast projectile finisher as the tool-belt skill, its definitely something to keep on your bar.
Um… what else…
Just stay calm, don’t pick fights you can’t handle, don’t yolo / over extend, don’t kitten after using CC, etc. Typical advice.
Thanks for reading my mess, hope you learned something.
It looks like this build is decent in PvP. Do you have anything to say about PvE? According to the beginning you said you’ve used it for both, but I’m curious what your experience in PvE was?
Oh my god that warrior ping ponging around in the 2nd fight had me dying.
Are you using sweet fx? Why does your fortified turrets look so different from mine?
(edited by VitalSuit.1980)
It looks like this build is decent in PvP. Do you have anything to say about PvE? According to the beginning you said you’ve used it for both, but I’m curious what your experience in PvE was?
It does decent damage in PvE if you go full zerkers of course, but that is due to using a rifle.
In PvE the same thing applies. Lots of CC and control lets me take minimal damage without dodging while able to dish out damage.
In dungeons when we stack I’ll often stack with the group, attack a bit, then throw out turrets eventually on the side to prevent ruining the stack.
It does work quite well. lvl 20+ fractals, dungeons, etc. Unfortunately, there are some cases where actually having the turret out all the time is impossible (Subject Alpha in CoE) or where they don’t shoot at all (Boss events) but I assume they don’t shoot at world bosses so that people can’t leave a turret out and AFK tag, since turrets do tag enemies for you.
Great write up… thnx for taking the time. Any chance you could link to an actual build page, maybe limited to just sPVP gear? Would bring everything you have said together in an easy to follow way. (for the more noobish amongst the engie’s… ahem… me….. ahem) -thnx!
Nice video!! I will have to read this when I get a chance!
Oh my god that warrior ping ponging around in the 2nd fight had me dying.
Are you using sweet fx? Why does your fortified turrets look so different from mine?
I’m using nothing. Maybe its the graphic settings.
The ping pong is actually something I regularly did when I ran Rifle/Rocket/Net. The easiest setup was Rifle #2 into Net Turret Overcharge. If they did not stun break or clean immobilize or have stability, its bouncin time.
Of course, the video was a 1v1 situation. Usually I have a team mate with me just wailing on the poor guy getting juggled.
Great write up… thnx for taking the time. Any chance you could link to an actual build page, maybe limited to just sPVP gear? Would bring everything you have said together in an easy to follow way. (for the more noobish amongst the engie’s… ahem… me….. ahem) -thnx!
This is what I was using in the video. Again, there are many variations, and for turrets, I strongly recommend making your own. I just wrote my experiences down and stuff here to help you make one.
In tPvP I run 2/0/6/4/2 instead with Soldiers/Clerics.
That’s why I titled this thread the “Universal Turrets”, because to me there really isn’t just one build that everyone can go to and use, but I do strongly believe that there is a solid baseline to work off of, and that’s 2/0/0/0/2 with the certain traits.
And for people who wonder why I don’t take up experimental turrets: You could always give up fortified turrets for them. I just prefer having a counter against long ranged players, in which there are a lot of these days. If you plan on dropping either of the 2/0/0/0/2 things, you lose a lot of defensive/offensive ability.
Thnx for the link!! :-)
Thnx for the link!! :-)
Just a quick warning: without the play style, you will get trashed on quite easily. At least that is how it was for me in the beginning.
Appreciate that… I imagine that will be the case whatever spec I play at first… I’m expecting losses while I learn :-) Your video is really useful…. More of you playing the build would be awesome!